2 a.m., where do I begin?
Crying off my face again
The silent sound of loneliness
Wants to follow me to bed
She moved to get up from the sofa, tears falling from her eyes. How could they just be gone? This wasn't supposed to be this way; they were supposed to be together. Brothers and sisters until the end, but now they were gone. She knew they had been dead for two years now, but it was still unbearable. She paused in the hall and looked at her face with dismay, she'd ruined her cosmetics. Again.
As she walked up the stairs to bed, she stopped in the middle, listening. To the silence. It echoed through the house, on and on. The sound of lonely. She ran up the last of the stairs, which she knew was childish, but she was afraid the sound of loneliness would follow her to her bedroom. She slammed the door shut, smiling as the sound now replaced the silence.
"See, I don't need you! I don't need your childish games! Just because you have all left me doesn't mean that the loneliness will stay here!" She shouted, falling onto her bed, her sobs gently replacing the echo of the slammed door. She cried because she knew that she was simply lying to herself.
I'm a ghost of a girl that I want to be most
I'm the shell of a girl that I used to know well
She paused by the long mirror in the lavatory at the office, looking at her reflection. She was a ghost of the girl she had tried so hard to be. Her eyes betrayed her. They were a hollow blue, filled with loneliness. The pain of loss, of regret, dwelled there; her eyes no longer laughed because there was nothing to laugh over. She was a shell of the girl she used to know so well.
She still went to parties and dances, but she now saw what all the others had told her about and known. There was nothing at these functions. They were void, vapid of anything loving; everyone attending these dances and things only cared about gossip and flirting. She had always been a shell, of everything. They, her siblings, had made her whole, filled her up. She had just not known it at the time. They always told her the truth about herself, while these people lied so they could talk about her behind her back.
Dancing slowly in an empty room
Can the lonely take the place of you?
I sing myself a quiet lullaby
Let you go and let the lonely in to take my heart again
She played the record of ballroom music; it was as close as she could get to the beautiful music from there. She set her glass of wine down on the coffee table, listening to the beat. She stood slowly, dancing to the music, remembering. She would dance with him; he would let only her dance with him because he was afraid of all the other young women, though he never said so. She twirled, her long skirt billowing out around her figure. She had sewn the dress, as nothing store-bought would do.
As she danced, she hummed a lullaby against the record, a song from that place, a lullaby her sister learnt from one of their most beloved subjects and friends. She didn't notice when the record spun to an end. She let go and danced to the majestic tune in her soul; her favorite dance from that place, the dance she and he danced so well. She closed her eyes and… Just. Let. Go.
She let her tears fall as she danced; the lonely was a friend to hold onto when she let everything go. She let her memories pass and fell to the floor, letting her loneliness take his place, her place, his place, mother and father's place. It felt so dark, so painful, but it was so good to feel the pain.
Too afraid to go outside
For the pain of one more loveless night
But the loneliness will stay with me
And hold me 'til I fall asleep
She stared out the window at the dark garden. She never went outside anymore. She never bothered seeing anyone anymore. They came to see her because they were concerned. All of her "friends" never bothered looking her up after she stopped attending functions. She knew that they were just empty souls now, as her older brother had told her the night he died, when he'd dropped her off at a party. If only she had listened, she could've been with him.
She had another nightmare of what it must have been like in the train wreck.
If they had still been here, she could've come to him about it, like they always did since they were the oldest. They had relied upon each other. Now there was no one for her to talk to. It was a loveless night. She was without a confidante. Her friend, her brother, was dead. She lay back down on her bed, the white sheets warm from her tossing and turnings. She let the loneliness wrap around her like the sheets, holding her till she fell into a dark and dreamless sleep.
I'm a ghost of a girl that I want to be most
I'm the shell of a girl that I used to know well
She stared at her reflection. She "was too thin," Aunt told her. She "needed to eat." What was the use when everything tasted like dirt? In That Place, even the dirt had flavor. She "was too pale" Grandmother said. Her "hair was far too long," Uncle muttered when he'd come to see her. What did any of that matter? She saw just a shell of what she had been. She was a ghost.
She lived, they had died. Everyone said she was blessed, lucky. No, she would think; they were the blessed ones, the lucky. They had never cared for this world. She thought she had. She was cursed to stay, doomed to forget and never be apart. She was the mocker of all their "childish games;" laughing at their fantasies and wild imaginations with everyone else in the world, while they stood in the centre, and stood proudly, with a golden lion who was far more real than anything this world offered. But she was the fool, not they. She had thought growing up was everything. She wanted so badly to grow up and be the beautiful queen she had been. But she didn't know that she could be that Queen by keeping her childhood stories.
They all had seemed to live up to their titles, while she never felt as if she was growing. She always felt that she was the one pretending. They lived their fantasies as if they were real, and in truth, she knew every story was real. She was "grown up," but not really. In body, yes. But she was just a puppet. She was everything the world wanted, everything the world accepted. Her siblings were never like that. They were frowned on by her "friends" and yet they never cared.
Dancing slowly in an empty room
Can the lonely take the place of you?
I sing myself a quiet lullaby
Let you go and let the lonely in to take my heart again
She was in the living room once again, a lamp the only light. She stopped brokenly humming the repetitive lullaby and screamed, because she was the one who deserved to die as they had, like a commoner, while they deserved to go out in a flash of glory, a blaze of magic, as only true royalty deserved. She ran to the hearth and stared at their pictures on the mantle. With a scream of frustration at the pain that refused to go, at the loneliness that refused to leave her in peace, she swept all the frames off.
She grabbed a book on a reading table and threw it out the window; it broke the glass with a loud tinkle, the shards falling near her feet. It did nothing to help her agony, merely reminding her of the air raid that caused Mum to send them to the house where it all began. The window she'd broken was the same one as the window broken in that raid. She fell among the glass and screamed and screamed, figures seemed to flit by her eyes as she did, the loneliness reminding her of all she had given up to "become an adult." She let go and let the lonely in; finding comfort in the familiar ache, her sobs subsiding to weak whimpers, quietly whispering their names over and over.
The next morning her Aunt and Uncle arrived to find her curled up in the glass, ignoring the shards as they pierced her pale skin and caused her blood to flow. They instantly sent her to a place where she could recover. The doctors called her condition "chronic depression." She didn't know what that meant, and she didn't care what they labeled this agonizing ache in her heart. She just wanted to be with them.
Broken pieces of
A barely breathing story
Where there once was love
Now there's only me and the lonely
The raven haired young woman in the white bathrobe stared out the hospital window at the slowly falling snow.
Four years.
They'd been dead four years now. Their story had just begun at their deaths; it wasn't the end as all the preachers and family said. She was the last of the broken pieces of a barely breathing story she still carried in her heart, the story of a magical place where she had grown up. Once, she'd had enough love to go around, but now it was gone. Gone with them, and gone with that place she could never go to again.
Now there was only her and the lonely. The ache that reminded her of all she'd lost. It was her comfort. Loneliness.
Just her and the Lonely. All her doctors stared at her oddly when she said this during their meetings. They said loneliness was not a person or a thing; it was just the feeling someone gets when they stand by themselves.
Dancing slowly in an empty room
Can the lonely take the place of you?
I sing myself a quiet lullaby
Let you go and let the lonely in to take my heart again
Sixty years, she thought, looking up at an old faded black and white of her dead siblings. It was fascinating that black and white was weird to all her relatives. They said color was better. Who would think that black and white would be a symbol of loneliness? Sixty years since they'd died. She learnt to control the hurt by hiding it under a false bravado of smiles and crystalline laughter. The High King would've told her to be true to who she was and stop trying to pretend. He'd have told her to be true to Aslan, the lion of the sky.
She smiled softly as she set the coffee cup on the table in the living room. She was old now, and it was time for her to go home. But with the medicine now, her daughter said she could live for twenty years more. Her only child couldn't seem to understand why a seventy-seven year old woman wouldn't want to keep on living.
She wished now she had never married Randolph. He hadn't cared for her stories of the otherworld she had lived in, or religion. Her daughter cared for neither, too.
She hummed the lullaby softly to herself. She danced slowly to the waltz in her mind; she remembered everything about her dances with him, down to the details of the clothes they wore. She stopped mid-dance and picked up the coffee cup, turned off the lights, stopping in the kitchen to put the cup in the sink. She was too tired to dance any more that night.
She sat at her dressing table and brushed out her long silver hair. She smiled as she braided it down her back. She slipped between the crisp white sheets and turned off the bedside lamp.
"Died in her sleep" Some say. "Just old age caught up to her" Still others say. But she had found her peace in the lonely. She had let the lonely go, and brought back the tranquility of her childhood. She went home.
"My sister, would you care to dance with the King of the Northern Sky?" The voice, calm as a summer's breeze asked. The owner, a tall blonde young man in blue and gold smiled at her as he slowly rose from his deep bow.
"Yes, Peter." the raven haired queen replied.
A dark haired king with a silver crown, dressed in a tunic and breeches of silver and black, smiled from where he sat on one of the four thrones as his siblings graced the ballroom with their beautiful dancing. They had always danced this song excellently in his opinion.
"What does the King of the Western Wood think?" The brunette grinned at her solemn brother from where she sat.
"That our beloved sister has at last come home," he replied. He turned his head to watching the dancers once again.
They danced slowly, as if they were the only two in the room. She spun away from him and her skirt flared out around her; he brought her back and they finished the dance, smiling happily.
"It is one that would not forget," the Magnificent King said breathlessly.
"Yes," the Gentle Queen replied.
A/N:
The song is called 'The Lonely" by Christina Perri. Narnia, is, of course, C.S. Lewis's. Only the idea is mine. Something I wrote a long time ago but finally decided to publish. Something I wrote when I was in a low place I'm not anymore, but can still fall into at times. I hope you enjoyed. No, no Susan/Peter, just a good sibling relationship.
WH